Late Night Dessert
by Beaker Bait
Summary: He wasn't going to talk and he would make sure Weir knew it. He would take her ice cream and eat it obediently, but that was it, that's where he drew the line. Minor corrections made


Title: Late Night Dessert.

Summary: He wasn't going to talk and he would make sure Weir knew it. He would take her ice cream and eat it obediently, but that was it, that's where he drew the line.

Parings: None really, but I guess this could be seen as pre Ronon/Weir ship. If that's how you want to see it...I very well can't stop you.

Spoilers: Nothing specific. If you have general knowledge of Ronon you should be fine. Takes place after _'Runner'_ (obviously) but before _'Trinity'_.

Warnings: None

Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis is not mine. Only the story line and any made up characters that may appear in the story belong to me.

A/N: This story came about as a challenge to myself to write a character I don't normally write. Of course since I find Ronon the hardest character for me to write my muse just had to demand I bring him up to the plate. So if he seems out of character at all I apologize.

Also keep in mind that I am first and foremost a Sheppard/Weir shipper, but I will admit that the whole Ronon/Weir paring has me intrigued (And I blame it all on Tielan). So as I said up top this could be seen as pre Ronon/Weir ship. If that's how you want to see it...I very well can't stop you.

* * *

Three months...twelve weeks...ninety days...two thousand one hundred sixty hours. That's how long he's been in Atlantis - at least according to the Atlantians' earth calendar - how long he's gone with out running. And with each passing day Ronon finds himself fighting harder and harder against the overwhelming urge he has to start running again. 

In the beginning he'd been _almost_ excited at the prospect of being able to stay in one place for longer than a day at most, but as time wore on he found himself being worn down by the things he'd once craved. The crowds of people, the noise, things that had once been a part of his everyday normal life on Sateda now seemed as foreign to him as a life without the Wraith.

People were everywhere it seemed, it was almost impossible to find somewhere to be alone unless you went to one of the unexplored areas of the city, but as Ronon had quickly learned that usually led to a long lecture from either or both Sheppard and Weir about safety and other such things that he had tuned out after five minutes. And the noise, the hustle and bustle of daily life: footsteps echoing in the corridors, the voices - whether yelling at each other or softly sharing old stories of good and bad times - and even just the rustle of clothing, all seemed to blare through his head.

Since he wasn't allowed to wander around the unexplored areas - unless he wanted to be lectured like a wayward child - Ronon had taken to wandering the areas he could late at night when most everyone was sound asleep. It was only then that there was any semblance of peace to the city. But even then the bottoms of his feet still itched - and he was pretty sure that, that wasn't just do to the case of, what Sheppard had called, athlete's foot he'd picked up from the locker room the off world teams used. It was the physical manifestation of what his instincts were screaming at him: run.

It was around three in the morning on one of his nightly wanderings that he found Weir in the commissary kitchen scooping up two bowls of the frozen dessert the Atlantians called ice cream. He was sure he'd been absolutely silent as he padded through the corridors on bare feet, yet the woman didn't so much as flinch when he'd appeared in the doorway, casting a shadow across the dimly lit kitchen counter.

"Ronon," she greeted softly as she continued scooping the frozen dessert.

"Shouldn't you be in bed or something?" Usually at this time of night the only people Ronon found still awake were the skeleton crew that maned the control room and the occasional scientist - usually McKay - working on some project or another in the labs.

"Probably." She shrugged her shoulders as she scooped more ice cream into the second bowl.

"You gonna eat both of those?" Ronon questioned indicating the two bowls of ice cream, not sure what had made him ask; it wasn't really any of his business after all.

"Nope, one of them is for you." At seeing the raised eyebrow Ronon shot her Elizabeth continued as she put the ice cream and all of the toppings away. "Figured you'd end up here soon. You usually do about this time of night." She grabbed the bowls and headed out to where the tables were.

It didn't surprise Ronon that she knew about his night time wanderings and the places he usually ended up at; the woman seemed to know almost everything about everything that went on in her city. And it was _her_ city - McKay and his bunch may have been the ones who fixed the city and Sheppard and his soldiers may have been the ones who protected the city, but Weir was the one who kept the city running, kept it going like a well oiled machine.

With out her things wouldn't get done; the scientists and soldiers would be at each others throats a hell of a lot more than they already were, all the paper work would pile up and take forever to get done, hell it probably _wouldn't_ get done at all since she seemed to be the only one in the city who actually did it anyway. Weir was the one who kept Atlantis alive. The city itself needed people in order to thrive and Ronon had no doubt that without Weir the Atlantians' expedition would have failed and Atlantis would have fallen either to the ocean it had long hibernated under or to the Wraith.

"Sit down." Elizabeth ordered as she put the bowls down on the table taking a seat of her own.

It wasn't until after he was sitting down at the table that he realized he'd followed her order without thinking about it or even realizing that he was following an order. Ronon took a moment to try and think of a time he'd ever followed an order without thinking about it or even realizing that he was following an order: he couldn't. Even with Sheppard he always questioned orders even if it was only silently in his head.

Silently he watched as she dug into her dessert with a barely audible happy little hum in the back of her throat - she probably didn't even realize she did it, the sound was so low, but he heard it none the less, he'd always had good hearing.

After a few bites Elizabeth looked up to see that Ronon hadn't touched his ice cream yet. "Eat," she encouraged him.

Shrugging he did as instructed. He'd tried ice cream once before and found that it wasn't all that bad but wasn't something that he'd enjoy eating a lot of - not like chocolate, which was something he could eat all time.

For a moment the two sat eating in a comfortable silence. Even so Ronon couldn't help feeling like there was something more to this late night dessert. In his experience people didn't doing things just for the hell of it, there was always a hidden motive. This was probably a ploy or something the Atlantians used to get a person to talk or something just as ridiculous and prissy.

For the first couple of weeks or so that Ronon had been in Atlantis, Dr. Heightmeyer the city's shrink - that's what Sheppard and McKay both called her if he remembers correctly - had hovered around trying to get him to talk about what his life on the run had been like for the last seven years and even before that back on Sateda. She'd said it would help with his healing process and his mourning of the years stolen from him by the Wraith, the destruction of his home world, and being the only survivor of his people.

Of course when she'd failed to get him to talk to her directly, Heightmeyer had started to play dirty by recruiting his teammates to try and get him to talk and open up to them, that of course had led to him clamming up even tighter. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to his teammates about any of his past at all, it was more the principal of the matter - he just didn't like people trying to pry into his head.

Ronon did have to give the doctor credit though, she was persistent and didn't back down easily. In a way it kind of reminded him of his mother, how she'd been a stubborn and persistent women when he'd been a child - of course being a single mom with six children had probably had something to do with that.

So in Ronon's mind Weir was just another person recruited by Heightmeyer to get him to talk about his feelings and such and the ice cream was her way of luring him in. But he wasn't going to talk and he would make sure Weir knew it. He would take her ice cream and eat it obediently, but that was it, that's where he drew the line.

"This isn't gonna work," he informed her around a mouthful of ice cream.

"What won't work?" She asked doing that eyebrow raising thing she does.

"This...this whatever it is you're trying to do, with the ice cream and stuff. It's not going to work, I'm not talking."

Elizabeth had to smile softly, she'd heard about Kate's little crusade against Ronon to try and get him to talk, if not to her, than at least to somebody. Whether he knew it or not Ronon had thrown down the gauntlet by refusing to talk with Kate, who normally (unless it was something that she and/or Carson felt was a serious issue) respected a persons decision not to speak with her. Elizabeth had to admit though that she didn't blame Kate at all for being curious, there was just something about Ronon that challenged a person to try and figure him out.

And it couldn't be said that Kate ever backed down from a good challenge - Elizabeth still had the pictures from last years Christmas party that she'd confiscated from Radek hidden away along with a number of other items she'd been forced to confiscate from personnel, like John's yo-yo, skateboard, bouncy ball collection...in fact if she thought about it most of the things she'd had to confiscate since arriving in the Pegasus Galaxy belonged to John.

"I'm not trying to do anything, I promise." She did the eyebrow thingy again. "I just felt like a late night snack and figured you'd like some company and a little ice cream."

Ronon just gave a soft grunt, not sure if he completely believed her. She didn't seem like she was lying, and he was pretty sure that she wouldn't lie to him. She hadn't yet as far as he knew. But that didn't mean she couldn't. Elizabeth just shook her head and continued to devour her late night dessert, sometimes stopping to make sure he was eating his and just to smile (she didn't do that nearly enough as far as he was concerned) at him but mostly just content to enjoy her dessert despite his less than stellar conversational skills. Which, for some maddening reason, frustrated him.

Feeling that annoying itch on the bottom of his bare foot Ronon began trying to satisfy the itch by rubbing his foot on the ground. When that didn't work he tried scratch it with his other foot, which unsurprisingly didn't help much. He tried to do all of this subtly of course not wanting to draw Weir's attention to his discomfort.

"You know Carson can give you something to help with that." Elizabeth spoke peaking up at Ronon through her eyelashes, still intent on eating her ice cream.

"Wha...How?" He didn't think he'd been that obvious.

She flashed him a perfect grin. "John's got it too, along with most of the off world personnel who use the locker room. Just be thankful Rodney hasn't gotten it or we'd never here the end of it."

He had to agree with her on that last part. Ronon had never met a person who complained as much as McKay did. "Speaking of Sheppard what would our fearless military leader think of you hanging around, eating ice cream like this, so late at night?"

She glanced at him, yet _again_ doing the eyebrow thing - what was it with this woman and the eyebrow raising? "You mean what would he think of me sitting here eating ice cream with _you_?"

Ronon shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. To be honest if he had a girl like her, he wouldn't be too pleased with the idea of her hanging out in the kitchen with some other guy. Especially if that other guy was someone like _him_.

"Doesn't matter really. It's not like he has a say in who I can or can't hang out with, it's not like we're dating or anything." She mirrored Ronon's shrug, "And even if we were he still wouldn't have a say in who I could or couldn't hang out with."

That tidbit of information actually shocked Ronon. Weir and Sheppard..._weren't_ mates. He could have sworn that they were, he's seen the way they both acted while together and apart and - to Ronon at least - it was almost blindingly obvious that the two were mates. And yet Weir was sitting there telling him that she and Sheppard weren't mates. Had he really been away from people _that_ long, that he couldn't tell the difference between mates and friends anymore?

He ate some more ice cream because he really didn't know what to say. In the back of his mind he was thinking that Sheppard had to be the biggest fool he'd ever met. How could the idiot not see what was right in front of his eyes?

He waited for her to say more, to explain maybe, but she just sat there eating her cherry while he finished off his dessert in the mostly comfortable silence. She was looking at him calmly, almost…fondly? Again, in less than five minutes, this woman had managed to catch him off guard. Ronon couldn't remember anyone - especially a girl - ever looking at him like _that_, even before the Wraith had taken him.

Watching the almost stunned look cross Ronon's face, Elizabeth silently wondered what the man was thinking about as she absently played with the cherry stem in her mouth seeing if she could still do something she hadn't tried doing in years. With a satisfied smirk she pulled the cherry stem that was now tied into a perfect knot out of her mouth and set it down on the table.

Staring at the stem she'd set down on the table Ronon nearly choked on the bite of ice cream he'd just taken as some very definitely not G-rated images flashed through his head. "Did you just…do that…with your _tongue_?" he exclaimed, again caught off guard by the woman in front of him. Although this time it was more the images suddenly rushing through his head because of the inadvertently sexual action, than anything she had done.

"It's amazing the things you learn in college." Elizabeth grinned. Seeing that Ronon looked like his brain had just stopped functioning her grin grew bigger. Standing up she gathered up the dishes and started back towards the kitchen, stopping long enough to pat Ronon's shoulder. "Go to bed Ronon."

Completely and utterly in shock by what he'd just seen the city's leader do, Ronon didn't resist when he was pulled out of his chair and pushed towards the doors. The next morning when he woke up he found that his feet had seemed to stop itching both literally and figuratively. As far as his problems went he knew he still had a lot of things to figure out, but things didn't seem so difficult and lonely anymore.

Crawling out of bed Ronon got dressed and headed for the commissary. He suddenly had a craving for a bowl of ice cream.

* * *

A/N2: I honestly did not start writing this with the intention of there being anything more than friendship, but as I'm sure you can see my muse is a persistent little bastard and started steering me towards pre Weir/Ronon ship towards the end there.

Also as I read over this I started to realize that parts of this story - mainly the itching feet and cherry stem parts - started to sound really familiar to me, but for the life of me I can't remember when, where, or even in what fandom I might have read something like this. So if any of you think you might know of a story that's similar to this one let me now so I can give credit where credit is do. (Just to narrow it down a bit I reed both Stargate fandoms, along with Star Trek: Voyager, TNG, and X-men: the movie fandoms).


End file.
